Personality, Religion, and Spirituality

Who would have thought that the founders of personality psychology – Gordon Allport and Henry Murray dabbled in the metaphysical. Allport created a scale to measure two religious orientations and even developed a theory of religious sentiment (Allport & Ross, 1967). Murray went even deeper into the weeds and wrote a paper on the personality of Satan (Murray, 1962). We cannot revive Allport and Murray from the dead to ask them why they chose such unscientific topics. I know some of you are shocked, after all what have mysticism and old cults to do with our sparkling clean Big Five factors? Here they are – I am high on Extraversion, average Agreeableness, very high Openness and Conscientiousness, and they are all measured with items developed to scope common behaviors for each construct. Follows a lecture in psychometrics.

But let us seriously ask ourselves. Why the religious and the spiritual, to lump these two together for convenience, could be relevant to the study of personality? I won’t torture the reader; this is not an exam by any means. Thus, I will provide the answer. Because as outlined elsewhere person-ality is the study of the whole person, the functional interdependence between body and mind. And what is the whole person without their deepest beliefs and convictions? Can we lightly disparage the fact that billions of people pray every day and coordinate their behavior with the commandments of a certain religion or practices of a certain spiritual movement?

Actually, it does not matter whether one is religion-focused or spirituality-focused, what matters is that both are part of who we are, our Self, our personhood. In this sense, religious motives, religiousness, and spirituality are closer to values and principles than core personality characteristics (Roccas et al., 2002). But also remember that values and principles constitute the third and last tier of the personality hierarchy – the self-concept as we have developed it through our cognitions (McCrae & Costa, 2008). In fact, our Selves can be likened to narrative identities (McAdams & Pals, 2006) - stories we have learned to tell ourselves. They might not reflect really what we have done in real life because we have used cognitive distortions to protect ourselves (i.e., defense mechanisms in play) or at best we have imperfectly reconstructed them from episodic memories. What is important though is that we keep evolving these stories and proudly declare “this is always what I have thought I am, this is ME.” Our life story, our Self gives us purpose and meaning to live, it connects us to this world and its cultures and societies, makes it easy to operate functionally within their boundaries and norms.

Thus, religiousness and spirituality can be thought of as a special, prepackaged cluster of values and principles[1] for sensemaking one’s life story. Get up early, work hard, do goodness to your neighbors, pray, persevere, respect your parents, do not lie, do not steal – these are just several behaviors you will find every religion or spiritual movement promotes. By following them we do not need to spend years discovering who we are (i.e., constantly realigning our self-narrative in a trial-and-error fashion). Think of it as learning to bake from scratch the most difficult English pie versus going to the store and buying the prepackaged one which most shoppers do not dislike (note that I did not say “most shoppers like”).

Of course, it is true that spirituality (spirit comes from Latin’s word for breath, also meaning the vital principle of a person, the thing that makes you alive) conveys spontaneity, elevated awareness, feeling of belongingness to something transcendent and the broader sense of personal meaning as a result. In contrast, religion is more of an organized activity where one is told and guided what this transcendence exactly is, what should one do or not do to consider themselves a true follower of that religion. In this respect, religion is more behavior-focused than spirituality and we can assume that its outward effect on personality should be greater.

Again, some of you might think that religion and spirituality have no place in scientific writing and analysis. Sort of “Why are you wasting my time making me read this, Georgi?” However, does this mean we will not explore how religion influences personality for about 84% of the world population which belongs to a religion (Pew Research Center, 2017)? How about U.S. adults specifically, 58% of whom believe in Hell and 72% believe in Heaven (Pew Research Center, 2015)? Maybe they have thought at least once about the permanence of their personality in these two realms? For these people religion and spirituality ARE part of their life stories and they will tell you that their personality is shaped to an extent or even greater extent by their religious or spiritual beliefs.

The last claim is supported by longitudinal studies which show that people become more religious as they age. Test-retest studies of religious beliefs also indicate that religiousness remains quite stable over time too (Schnitker & Emmons, 2021). In particular, Saraglou’s (2010) meta-analysis found Agreeableness and Conscientiousness to relate to religiosity, and Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Openness, and Extraversion to relate to Spirituality. However, the meta-analytic correlations were modest, ranging between .13 and .23. Unsurprisingly, Openness related negatively to Religious Fundamentalism. Most importantly, though, longitudinal studies reveal that the casual relationship between personality and religiousness/spirituality is one in which personality influences religiousness, not vice versa. Saraglou (2010) cites multiple studies supporting the argument that when the measurement of personality was done in pre-adulthood and the measurement of religiousness/spirituality was done in adulthood and late adulthood, Conscientiousness and low Neuroticism positively predicted religiousness, low Agreeableness predicted lower religiousness, and Openness predicted spirituality. Saraglou’s meta-analysis was recently corroborated by another study by Ashton and Lee (2019) which employed a multinational sample of nearly 200,000 respondents. In this study, Honesty-Humility, which is HEXACO’s factor that goes beyond the FFM, also related to religiousness, albeit again weakly (.15). The breakdown of the meta-analytic correlations by the main world religions indicated that the correlations did not vary between religions and were in the same ranges reported in the main analysis (i.e., modest). This finding solidifies the primacy of personality over religiousness.

Let us unpack these findings. Most importantly, they tell us that personality precedes religiousness chronologically, and indeed many studies have supported this position (Schnitker & Emmons, 2021). Second, the modest associations with the Big Five factors tell us that religiousness is not a personality characteristic/trait. Otherwise, we should have seen it explained by much larger chunks of variance from the Big Five factors. Whereas personality evolves from basic temperaments around the second or third year of age, religiousness comes later in our lives through socialization and the environment. However, let us not forget that sometimes these two forces – nature and nurture – join hands and become so intermixed that it is difficult to call one the chicken and the other the egg. For example, in religious families, children’s development of Conscientiousness and Agreeableness might unfold parallel to the development of their religious motives. Also, what do you think happens when generations of hard-working and altruistic religious people have children brought up to be religious, hard-working, and altruistic? That’s right, through the genetic inheritability of personality and the effect of the environment, it would be hard to separate these two because they fed each other the products of its workings.

We have seen the meta-analytic findings and now please think – following the rules, being organized, telling the truth, working hard, keeping your promises, being empathetic, being altruistic and forgiving, helping people in need, maintaining harmony – all these signature behaviors of Conscientiousness and Agreeableness predict being religious. Well, aren’t these behaviors the same ones taught in churches, synagogues, mosques, and Buddhist temples? Aren’t stability (expressed as Conscientiousness) and harmony (expressed as Agreeableness) what religions promise to societies? Now, think about the religious person. By following their religion’s canon, they are given a very clear path, a recipe, they are encouraged, and reinforced to express more Conscientiousness and Agreeableness. Of course, it has happened so often in the past, and unfortunately happens still in the present, that religions have been used and abused to provoke people express exactly the opposite of Conscientiousness and Agreeableness. Conscientious and agreeable people have been provoked and convinced that it is the will of their God to go burn and conquer the lands inhabited by people of other religions. Early Christians broke the finest statues and temples of Antiquity into rubble. Muslims invaded Europe and decimated many Eastern European kingdoms (and almost all of Europe at the siege of Vienna). This is when the beneficial influence of religion in expressing one’s personality turns ugly and converts the pious into zealot soldiers.

Let us freshen the air and turn to spirituality and again please think in real-life terms. Having positive emotions, actively seeking new and exciting experiences, having many non-standard ideas, liking to be in the company of people, imagining things others cannot imagine – all these behavioral markers of Openness and Extraversion – roughly describe living spiritually. Spirituality, therefore, gives a lot of freedom how we express our personality. In a way, we can always be spiritual in our own way and do not need to define ourselves or show others through practices (as in religion) that we are spiritual. This being said, a striking conclusion can be drawn about both religiousness and spirituality – that neither of the two requires the expression of the full gamut of one’s personality. In fact, they seem to split the Big Five into two clusters promoting Stability and Harmony (religiousness) versus Plasticity and Growth (spirituality). Then, imagine, wouldn’t it be nice for the development of our personalities to mix their best aspects? What would it be if we had more spiritual religions and religious (i.e., codified with practices and canon) spirituality? Having religions which actually cared for who you are and what you want to become and having spiritual people be more organized and serious about converting others to their, hopefully, good practices (warning here – cults!). ?

To reduce the mental burden of such heavy questions, it would be good to provide the reader with a small escapade and bring to their attention the measurement of religiousness and spirituality, and specifically discuss two scales widely attributed in previous research. The first is Allport’s (Allport & Ross, 1967) personal religious orientations scale. Its intrinsic orientation represents the mature religious motive as a guiding principle in life, i.e., religion as an end in itself. An example item from this orientation is “It is important to me to spend time in private thought and prayer.” Its second orientation measures the extrinsic faith used instrumentally for personal goals, i.e., religion as a means. An example item is “I go to church mainly because I enjoy seeing people I know”. The scale has been criticized for its lack of measurement rigor but recently it has been proposed that the situation is not that bad after all if the extrinsic component is further split into personal and social subcomponents (Tiliopoulos et al., 2007). The second scale – the spiritual transcendence scale (Piedmont, 1997) – conceptualizes spirituality as a single factor with three facets: Prayer Fulfillment (a feeling of joy and contentment that results from personal encounters with a transcendent reality), Universality (a belief in the unitive nature of life), and Connectedness (a belief that one is part of a larger human reality that cuts across generations and across groups). Interestingly, experts from the main world religions participated in scoping the content of the scale items. Across the many multicultural studies with the scale, only the total factor and the Prayer Fulfillment and Universality facets remained stable and were supported. What can we conclude from these two scales? I see the story of the human needing to believe in a higher purpose and construct meaning in their life. In a way the purpose is created and reinforced through intrinsic religiousness and prayer, in a way it is fulfilled through socialization with others and connectedness. Thus, we can reduce both religiousness and spirituality to two motives – for personal meaning and for living with others. Again, remember my example with the prepackaged pie?

Finally, let’s touch base on the Soul. Why the Soul? Because the soul is common to both religiousness and spirituality, it is the entity which allegedly maintains our Self through time and space. According to the Abrahamic religions (i.e., Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), the soul is what remains permanent after death as the body is dissolved into the elements, and the soul will be resurrected and judged in the final days. Now, note that I am not saying what will happen in the interim – where, how, and will you exist at all as YOUR personal identity. Philosophers and theologians have thought on this topic, and we surely do not want to think any more than them, especially after so much thinking on this topic, right? What is certain, however, is that your soul will carry YOUR virtues and sins at the time of resurrection. But think about it, these virtues and sins are nothing else but what you did during your life prompted by your personality dispositions, motivations, desires, and values. Thus, in a way, it seems that it will be your personality that will face divine judgement, so develop it carefully and with good forethought ??

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Allport, G. W., & Ross, J. M. (1967). Personal religious orientation & prejudice. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 5, 432–443.

Ashton, M. C., & Lee, K. (2019). Religiousness and the HEXACO personality factors and facets in a large online sample.?Journal of Personality,?87(6), 1103-1118.

McAdams, D. P., & Pals, J. L. (2006). A new Big Five: Fundamental principles for an integrative science of personality.?American Psychologist, 61(3), 204–217.?https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.61.3.204

McCrae, R. R., & Costa, P. T., Jr. (2008). The five-factor theory of personality. In O. P. John, R. W. Robins, & L. A. Pervin (Eds.),?Handbook of personality: Theory and research?(pp. 159–181). The Guilford Press.

Murray, H. A. (1962). The personality and career of Satan.?Journal of Social Issues, 18(4), 36–54.?https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4560.1962.tb00424.x

Piedmont, R. L. (1997).?Spiritual Transcendence Scale?[Database record]. APA PsycTests.

Pew Research Center (2015). Most American Believe in Heaven … and Hell. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/11/10/most-americans-believe-in-heaven-and-hell/

Pew Research Center (2017). The Changing Global Religious Landscape. https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2017/04/05/the-changing-global-religious-landscape/

Roccas, S., Sagiv, L., Schwartz, S. H., & Knafo, A. (2002). The Big Five personality factors and personal values. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28(6), 789-801. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167202289008

Saroglou, V. (2010). Religiousness as a cultural adaptation of basic traits: A five-factor model perspective. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14(1), 108-125.

Schnitker, S. A., & Emmons, R. A. (2021). Personality and religion. In O. P. John & R. W. Robins (Eds.), Handbook of personality: Theory and research?(pp. 707–723). The Guilford Press.

Tiliopoulos, N., Bikker, A. P., Coxon, A. P., & Hawkin, P. K. (2007). The means and ends of religiosity: A fresh look at Gordon Allport’s religious orientation dimensions. Personality and Individual differences,?42(8), 1609-1620.

[1] ????Unfortunately, throughout history tremendous energy has been spent to use these beliefs and values to separate people from each other. Much less energy has been spent into showing people that the beliefs and values of all religions have similar altruistic underpinnings. Which begs the question why we need a multitude of religions when their moral teachings can be condensed and taught as something called Humanism, something that puts the human in the center, not a transcendent and capricious God.